Disaster Movie

Starring Matt Lanter and Vanessa Minnillo. Rated 14A.

You’ve watched a lot of movies this past year. So many that your noggin needs help getting all those characters straight. Like, who was the main character in Iron Man again? Was it”¦Iron Man? And who was the crabby old guy with the whip and fedora in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Hmm”¦

Disaster Movie, an hour-and-a-half’s worth of film-parody attempts í  la the Scary Movie franchise, is here to jog your movie-memory–taxed bean. And, if you cracked your rib cage in a freak end-of-summer kegger accident and it hurts like a visit from Anton Chigurh when you laugh, don’t worry. This comedy falls so flat so fast, the experience feels like a forehead tap from Javier Bardem’s cow killer.

The Coen brothers’ hair-don’t killer stumbles into Disaster Movie, along with Beowulf, Hellboy, Prince Caspian, Hannah Montana, Batman, Hancock, the Superbad kids, Justin Timberlake, Jessica Simpson, Amy Winehouse, and innumerable other film and pop-cult figures gamely played by actors who should Facebook themselves some new agents. They’re all “dating” Matt Damon. They’re all crammed into an uninspired Cloverfield (itself a wannabe horror parody) send-up, with Will (Matt Lanter) searching for girlfriend Amy (Vanessa Minnillo) while dodging falling meteors and falling jokes.

Writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (cowriters of the original Scary Movie) don’t manage satire, parody, or more than blips of funny. But actor Crista Flanagan is such a deft mimic of Ellen Page’s preggo linguistic-gymnast Juno, it’s amusing when bloodthirsty Alvin and his chipmunks give her more than the stinkeye. Otherwise, Disaster Movie is one doo-doo that can’t be undid, homeskillet.

Comments